Western Music

By EILEEN SOSKIN and EILEEN SOSKIN,SPECIAL TO THE SUN | November 4, 2005

The Candlelight Concert Society features the Trio Da Salo at 8 p.m. tomorrow at Smith Theatre on the campus of Howard Community College. The trio will perform a varied program of Beethoven's String Trio Op. 9, No. 3, DohnM-anyi's Serenade in C Major, Op. 10, and Mozart's Divertimento in E-flat Major, K.563. Although the literature for string trio (violin, viola and cello) is not as extensive as that for piano trio (violin, cello and piano), the genre allows for special effects for listeners and performers alike.

It takes little effort to find severe problems with the character of Richard Wagner, the man who was born two centuries ago and, as he was the first to acknowledge, became one of history's greatest composers. It's much harder to dismiss his music, which is receiving extra attention around the world during this bicentennial year. Locally, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra is taking a close look at Wagner over the next few months. The focus starts this week with a program featuring, in concert form, Act 1 from "Die Walkure," the second of four operas that comprise "The Ring of the Nibelung," the epic filled with heroic and villainous mortals, giants, troubled gods, Valkyries on horseback, horned helmets, a mighty sword and, of course, a magical ring.

Southwest Shuffle: Pioneers of Honky-Tonk, Western Swing, and Country Jazz, by Rich Kienzle. Routledge. 288 pages. $19.95 softbound. Kienzle is an encyclopedic authority on U.S. country and western music. His enthusiasms are intense and persuasive -- if you like anything at all about the genre, which is far from universal fondness. Here, in a scholarly but thoroughly readable volume, Kienzle explores the Southwest element of the genre, quite distinct -- especially before the 1950s -- from the more traditional Southeastern and Midwestern species.

PASADENA, Calif. - John Rich, half of the country music sensation Big & Rich, achieved stardom the old-fashioned way: He earned it. The Texas native, with pal Kenny Alphin, spent years playing jam sessions at Nashville bars and at fairs across the country before they landed a record deal. He didn't have a show like NBC's Nashville Star to give his career an instant boost. In five previous seasons on the USA Network, the American Idol-style competition show for country singers has launched the careers of Buddy Jewel, Miranda Lambert and Chris Young.

The Peabody Institute these days looks expectantly to the East. The Far East.Nearly 20 percent of the 658 graduate and undergraduate students of that venerable institution on Mount Vernon Place are East Asians, mainly Koreans and Chinese from Taiwan. The overwhelming majority are women.The process that led to the "Asianization of the Peabody," as one staff member put it, began a little over a decade ago. It has continued to the degree that David Lane, Peabody's admissions director, has auditioned students in Asia for the past three years.

PASADENA, Calif. - John Rich, half of the country music sensation Big & Rich, achieved stardom the old-fashioned way: He earned it. The Texas native, with pal Kenny Alphin, spent years playing jam sessions at Nashville bars and at fairs across the country before they landed a record deal. He didn't have a show like NBC's Nashville Star to give his career an instant boost. In five previous seasons on the USA Network, the American Idol-style competition show for country singers has launched the careers of Buddy Jewel, Miranda Lambert and Chris Young.

There does not seem to be a one word description that neatly fits Howard County crooner Joe Carta's musical style. If such a worddidexist,itmightbe"country-western-r ock-blues-mariachi-Italian-folk-blue-grass-jazz." His repertoire is varied, but his goal is simple - he wants to please. Carta glides easily into most styles of music without missing a beat. Entertainer: Joe Carta, 66, aims to please, and performs a ranging repertoire. "Whatever kind of music people want, that's what I play," said Carta, 66, who has been singing and rubbing elbows with the famous and not-yet-famous in the Maryland-D.

Temperament: The Idea That Solved Music's Greatest Riddle, by Stuart M. Isacoff. 288 pages. Alfred A. Knopf. $23. Given the spate of unexpectedly popular books on scientific and mathematical subjects in recent years, it's not surprising that someone should attempt to turn a rather arcane musical matter into an entertaining slice of history. Usually, only musicians and piano technicians get intensely interested in discussing the complex issue of tuning, and even they may not take the conversation all the way back to Sir Isaac Newton or Galileo, not to mention Pythagoras.

Bill Cosby was beside himself, grinning, dancing, mugging for the camera. He was the host of some "tribute to American music" and was boogieing away as an assortment of musicians took the stage for the finale.Make that an assortment of jazz musicians. That's the only music viewers had a chance to hear in this hourlong "tribute to American music." Where were the country and western, blues, rhythm and blues, gospel and rock artists?Absent. Jazz aficionados have long contended that jazz is America's only original musical art form.

The word "improvisation" derives from the Latin improvisus ("unforeseen") and ex improviso ("without preparation") and musically denotes the art of a completely spontaneous performance.In Western music -- practically up to the advent of recorded sound -- improvisation was all but indistinguishable from the craft of composition. Long before they became famous as "composers," musicians as various as J.S. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt, Saint-Saens and Bruckner first made their names as extraordinary improvisers.

Moving from England to Nigeria and back again would be a bit of culture shock for most, but for singer, songwriter and producer Adesiji "Siji" Awoyinka, the meshing of two vastly different cultures was the impetus of his musical career. Moving around "gave me a broad perspective, a broad palette from which to draw from," Siji said. The soft-spoken musician, who plays the Naija Fest on Saturday, was born in London to Nigerian parents, but was raised for most of his childhood in Lagos, the most populous city in Nigeria and also a hot spot of the African music scene.

By EILEEN SOSKIN and EILEEN SOSKIN,SPECIAL TO THE SUN | November 4, 2005

The Candlelight Concert Society features the Trio Da Salo at 8 p.m. tomorrow at Smith Theatre on the campus of Howard Community College. The trio will perform a varied program of Beethoven's String Trio Op. 9, No. 3, DohnM-anyi's Serenade in C Major, Op. 10, and Mozart's Divertimento in E-flat Major, K.563. Although the literature for string trio (violin, viola and cello) is not as extensive as that for piano trio (violin, cello and piano), the genre allows for special effects for listeners and performers alike.

Southwest Shuffle: Pioneers of Honky-Tonk, Western Swing, and Country Jazz, by Rich Kienzle. Routledge. 288 pages. $19.95 softbound. Kienzle is an encyclopedic authority on U.S. country and western music. His enthusiasms are intense and persuasive -- if you like anything at all about the genre, which is far from universal fondness. Here, in a scholarly but thoroughly readable volume, Kienzle explores the Southwest element of the genre, quite distinct -- especially before the 1950s -- from the more traditional Southeastern and Midwestern species.

There does not seem to be a one word description that neatly fits Howard County crooner Joe Carta's musical style. If such a worddidexist,itmightbe"country-western-r ock-blues-mariachi-Italian-folk-blue-grass-jazz." His repertoire is varied, but his goal is simple - he wants to please. Carta glides easily into most styles of music without missing a beat. Entertainer: Joe Carta, 66, aims to please, and performs a ranging repertoire. "Whatever kind of music people want, that's what I play," said Carta, 66, who has been singing and rubbing elbows with the famous and not-yet-famous in the Maryland-D.

Temperament: The Idea That Solved Music's Greatest Riddle, by Stuart M. Isacoff. 288 pages. Alfred A. Knopf. $23. Given the spate of unexpectedly popular books on scientific and mathematical subjects in recent years, it's not surprising that someone should attempt to turn a rather arcane musical matter into an entertaining slice of history. Usually, only musicians and piano technicians get intensely interested in discussing the complex issue of tuning, and even they may not take the conversation all the way back to Sir Isaac Newton or Galileo, not to mention Pythagoras.

When Yo-Yo Ma founded the Silk Road Project in 1998, he could not have anticipated Sept. 11, or the way that recent events have made his venture more meaningful, perhaps even necessary. What the famed cellist started out to do was explore the musical cultures of the ancient lands that bridged Europe and Asia - the countries along the so-called Silk Road that led to the exchange of goods and the cross-pollination of ideas, including musical ones. Today, virtually all of these countries are being affected, in one way or another, by the war on terrorism.

John Millen happily marches to the beat of a different 0) drummerIn a geodesic dome house overlooking the autumn splendors of Gwynns-Falls/Leakin Park, craftsman John Millen shapes red oak and goatskin into haunting resonances. His business, ThunderHeart Drums, provides one-of-a-kind Middle East and African ceremonial drums for musicians, ethnomusicologists, dancers and music therapists throughout the country.A Baltimore native, Mr. Millen studied trumpet at the Peabody Conservatory and worked as a music teacher before drifting off to the Caribbean for several years on a sailboat he built.

It takes little effort to find severe problems with the character of Richard Wagner, the man who was born two centuries ago and, as he was the first to acknowledge, became one of history's greatest composers. It's much harder to dismiss his music, which is receiving extra attention around the world during this bicentennial year. Locally, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra is taking a close look at Wagner over the next few months. The focus starts this week with a program featuring, in concert form, Act 1 from "Die Walkure," the second of four operas that comprise "The Ring of the Nibelung," the epic filled with heroic and villainous mortals, giants, troubled gods, Valkyries on horseback, horned helmets, a mighty sword and, of course, a magical ring.

FOR ME, classical music has always fallen into the "nice things" category. So it was somewhat of a jolt to learn that malls, bus terminals and other facilities that attract a diverse public are playing classical music to keep out the riff-raff. Blast the punks with a Scarlatti motet. That'll fix 'em. It is especially vexing to read of the classical music being used as a threat at a time when we are supposed to be commemorating the 250th anniversary of Johann Sebastian Bach's death. If any of the old Europeans in wigs could resonate with today's youth, it would be Bach.

The world's best French orchestra could someday be located in Tokyo. If that happens, it will be the second time in 25 years that the best French orchestra will have been created outside of France.And it will be because last year the NHK Orchestra -- the best of Japan's more than 300 orchestras, and named after the TV network that owns it -- appointed Charles Dutoit its music director.Dutoit is not himself French -- he's from French-speaking Switzerland -- and he excels as much in early 20th-century works, such as those by Bartok and Stravinsky, and in Russian music, from Tchaikovsky and Mussorgsky through Prokofiev and Shostakovich, as he does in music by the French masters.